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Short-sea shipping (SSS) plays an important role in regional transportation networks by supporting regional trade and improving inter-modality. In particular, countries in north-east Asia, such as China, South Korea and Japan have been served well by local SSS services. While SSS markets in Northeast Asia (NEA) have been developed by bilateral routes with sub-markets, the market structure of each sub-markets varies depending on concentration and competition levels as well as government intervention. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the market structure of SSS markets in the Northeast Asia.

Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and concentration ratio are adopted to measure the market concentration from 2013 to 2017 for SSS markets in NEA. Additionally, the balance between supply and demand is investigated by measuring the capacity utilisation factor (CUF) based on slot capacity.

The market structure in the NEA SSS markets is influenced by firms’ behaviour under different levels of governmental intervention. Shipping firms in a market with more governmental intervention in market entry tend to focus on balancing supply and demand rather than increasing market share, whereas firms in a market with less intervention (and more competition) tend to increase their market share by pursuing efficient capacity management.

The period of data set is limited to 2013–2017. Furthermore, prices or revenue for specific routes are not available.

This paper sheds light on the market structure and behaviour of players in SSS market. In addition, the work has value to measure capacity utilisation based on slot capacity.

This paper aims to clear whether the monopoly structure of the internet industry has produced market power and discussed the welfare change of the internet industry monopoly.

By using new empirical industrial organization methods and taking the e-commerce market as an example, the authors measured market power and economies of scale of the internet platform companies.

Internet platform enterprises have formed scale economy, but it has not had market power, and the industry still maintains high levels of competition; also, the emergence of large enterprises may increase the welfare of consumers.

The conclusion of this paper clarified actual competition status of internet industry and provided a new foothold for regulation and ideas for the traditional industry to crack the Marshall Conflict.

This study explores the motivations underlying the European Super League (SL) breakaway attempt. While institutional settings bind football to tradition, investors conceive football companies as an opportunity to diversify their investments in a fast-growing technological industry. The study investigates the market structure and identifies the reasons behind the European football crisis, proposing to modify the role of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in the European football market.

After summarizing the unusual features of the European football market, the article displays the agents involved and their interrelations. Modeling the market facilitates picturing the misalignment of targets of regulatory bodies and football clubs. It also helps visualize the potential consequences of the SL coup on the market.

The market does not allow football companies to monetize their business and compete with other entertainment sectors. Only a radical change in the balance of power between clubs and self-interested institutional settings can settle this situation. Indeed, this relation leads to market inefficiency because the two most critical clubs' financial problems (the high dependence on broadcasting revenues and the uncontrolled expenditures on players' salaries) are linked to the same issue: the governing bodies strongly influence the profit equation by holding control of media rights and incentivizing clubs to overspend to win both on-field and off-field.

This study is the first to assess the football business market using an evolutionary approach to address its problems. It offers a visualizing tool to understand the market and proposes an alternative solution for solving the football market crisis.

Container liner shipping companies started expanding their business by investing in container port terminals in the late 1990s. This market entry results in an extensive presence of vertically integrated liners and terminals. This study aims to explore the competition effects of this vertical integration trend based on a regional (European) analysis. In particular, it extracts lessons from the European Commission (EC) cases on the competition effects of vertical integration. The critical analysis of the cases examined at the institutional level intends to reach conclusions on whether liner–terminal vertical integration harmed or advanced competition in the relevant markets and/or the extent that there is a need to revise the current policy practices.

This study critically assesses the EC’s decisional practices in port container terminal vertical mergers in the last 25 years (1997–2021). Based on a literature review comparing maritime and competition economists' perspectives, it reviews the types of mergers examined, the methodology followed for relevant market definition and calculation of market shares and the estimated competition effects. The Hamburg–Le Havre area is the port range used as a case study for comparing the decisional practice with actual market developments. These container ports serve the greatest consuming market of final and intermediate goods in Europe and are gateways to Central and Eastern Europe.

The assessment identifies a need for expanding the investigation as a precondition for reaching conclusions on both the anti- and pro-competitive effects. First, only a limited number of transactions have been notified to the EC. Second, the empirical research identified a gap in this process, as there were no decisions (phase I) on vertical mergers between 2008 and 2016. Third, the exante assessment has not applied a phase II in-depth analysis to any case due to the absence of competition concerns. Finally, due to the absence of complaints, there is a lack of any ex post assessment of the effects of vertical integration.

This assessment is important for understanding the current and emerging features of intra-port and inter-port competition and the potential effects that the continuation and expansion of liner companies' vertical integration strategies will have along maritime supply chains. It also contributes to the broader discussion on liner companies' strategies, such as the research and policy-making efforts around the globe to understand the impact of both vertical and horizontal integration.

These discussions are critical for a diversity of businesses that use liner shipping services or provide facilities and services to container shipping lines or ports. They are important for the interests of customers and consumers as they could inform any needed re-visiting of competition policy to protect from the dominance of any market developments that would lead to conditions limiting competition. Expanding analysis on the competition effects of non-notified mergers would help a better understanding of market changes.

Enhancing competition and limiting monopolies is valuable from a consumer's perspective. This is more so in the case of maritime trade that serves the needs of societies. The study contributes by generating a better understanding of how decision-makers have worked towards that direction and what realignments are worthy.

There are no previous comprehensive reviews and analyses of the ways that policy-makers at the regional level have addressed the competition effects of vertical integration strategies of liner shipping companies when enhancing competition is valuable from a consumer perspective. Comparing maritime economists and competition, the study, via its literature review, also offers a comparison of maritime and competition perspectives on these competition effects, allowing positioning of how effective decisional-making practices have been.

To realise the shared development of the digital economy, people need to transcend the capital logic and advocate the logic of cooperative development, i.e. “co-construction, benefit-sharing and co-governance”. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned statement.

Platform economy is a new economic form produced by the transformation of the social production patterns in the era of digital capitalism. In the neo-imperialist stage, a new stage of capitalist development, capital logic promotes the global expansion of the platform economy and influences its development process, organisational form, contradictions and dilemmas and internal transcendence. Having the spatiotemporal chain of capital circulation repaired, the globalisation of the platform economy is reshaping how the means of production are combined with labour, affecting the local changes in the general relations of production and “international relations of production”.

In the accumulation of digital capitalism, the social contradictions and fundamental contradictions in the capitalist world have been further intensified, making exploitation, income distribution gap, monopoly and other problems increasingly severe. The imbalance and inequality in the global development of the digital economy are increasingly prominent.

Regarding the global governance of the digital economy, China, as a major responsible country, will strive to encourage all countries to co-build a community with a shared future in cyberspace. In the new international development pattern of digital economy globalisation, China must take effective measures to actively safeguard its national security and development interests to meet specific challenges.

Variation, replication and selection processes are acknowledged as key constructs in studies on how industries evolve, but no theoretical and empirical contributions have applied these key constructs to analyzing industries in specific stages of their history. This paper aims to fill this gap, taking for reference the firm and its strategic action in particular.

After delineating and discussing the three processes of interest – variation, replication and selection – this paper analyzes three very different evolutionary contexts: “red” industries, that reached maturity maintaining a polypolistic structure, and that continue to evolve in this phase; the oligopolistic transformation undergone by certain industries; and the emergence of new market spaces around new products developed by firms.

Variations are mainly reactions to the competitive environment in the evolution of red industries or environment-modifying in the case of industries evolving toward an oligopoly, and in the creation of new market spaces. Horizontal replication through employee mobility prevails in red industries, while in the other two contexts firms driving the evolution raise barriers to replication, inhibiting both horizontal and vertical replication. While selection does not come about in a new market space as long as the barriers erected by the first comer remain in place, it occurs in the form of subset selection in the other two settings.

This paper takes an entirely novel approach and proposes a pluralist framing of how industries evolve, interpreting the different evolutionary situations on the strength of the key variables of variation, replication and selection.

Aiming at the lack of explanatory power of traditional industrial organization theory in cross-border competition, by introducing the idea of ecological niche, the authors aim to explore the competitive situation of platform-based enterprises when they operate in multiple fields.

With the help of ecological niche theory, construct the niche width and niche overlap index of typical enterprises in the platform economy, and find out the advantages and the intensity of competition through comparative analysis.

In an environment of cross-border competition, large enterprises have significant competitive advantages, and the fierce competition is concentrated among medium-sized enterprises.

The conclusions of this paper not only provide new insights for explaining the phenomenon of cross-border competition in the platform economy, but also provide theoretical reference for the anti-trust enforcement practice in the platform economy.

The study performs an empirical test to assess the impact of the Pakistan-China Free trade agreement (FTA) on Pakistan, China, and the World's exports under homogenous and differentiated products. This study employs the modeling with Poisson specification with Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood method for the estimations. The results of empirical test show that the effect of FTA on the FTA and Non-FTA countries is greater in the differentiated product as compared to the homogenous product. Therefore, one of the most important policy implications provided by this study is that export enterprises need to concentrate on differentiated products as compare to the homogenous products after the implementation of the Pakistan-China FTA. Moreover, the previous literature concluded that Pakistan-China FTA was more beneficial for China as compared to Pakistan. However, according to this study, if Pakistani enterprises focus more on differentiated products as compared to homogenous products, then it will be equally beneficial for both Chinese and Pakistani enterprises. This study will contribute to the literature by considering the Bertrand competition between asymmetric countries and find out the effect of the FTA on these three countries. It considers China, Pakistan, and the Rest of the World as first, second, and third countries.

Since the 2010s, market conditions for container shipping companies have been deteriorating owing to decreasing container cargo trade and increasing supply capacity. This study aims to contribute to the empirical literature on the container shipping industry market structure. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the extent of market competition.

This study analyzes the market structure and evaluates the market power of shipping companies through a non-structural test.

The H-statistic for the entire period of 2004–2018 was 0.37, which is significantly different from zero. This indicates the absence of monopoly pricing throughout the entire period. For the time-phased estimates, the H-statistic between 2004 and 2008 is 0.15, which is not significantly different from zero. On the other hand, the H-statistic from 2009 to 2018 was 0.40, which differs significantly from zero.

As the Far East Freight Conference had released tariffs and charge rates by item for container shipping routes, monopolistic pricing is said to have appeared until the European Union abolished the European Economic Community (No. 4056/86) in 2008, before the economic crisis. However, this study indicates that pricing in the container shipping industry has been distinctly non-monopolistic; further, competition seems to have intensified since 2008. Industry competitiveness is of interest not only to academics but also to practitioners, including policymakers, especially when considering competition policies.